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Publishers’ Forum 2018

Topics 2018

Publishing has well expanded beyond books. As a result, new players have become powerful competitors in our industry. A new wave of technological innovation is transforming how content is produced, managed, and delivered. Target audiences of readers, professionals, or learners have abundant choice. So, publishers must embrace new business models to retain their position.
The debates at the Publishers’ Forum 2018 will examine how this is impacting on publishers in all sectors by revealing new opportunities and challenging traditional ways of doing business:
• Re-thinking consumer books, through a consumer lens and mind-set;
• Upgrading the publishing toolbox to unleashing the power of digital, especially in controlling, data management, marketing and sales;
• Exploring a world in which artificial intelligence, machine learning, virtual and augmented reality, or multiple-media narrative are naturally built-in features;
• Re-organizing publishing houses to accommodate extended value chains, co-operations and partnerships, agile management, resulting in confident teams.
The Publishers’ Forum 2018 will present strategic keynote addresses, high-level panel discussions, and hands-on workshops on each of these lead topics.
Putting a focus on experienced international thought leaders and experienced practitioners, the event will blend provocative innovations with reality checks and balances to make your publishing operation future-proof.

New models for end-consumers

How can publishers win over more and, above all, new end-consumers? What other sales models work? And which specific models from other business and media segments can publishing emulate?
In Berlin on 26 and 27 April 2018, the speakers at the Publishers’ Forum will draw on their unique experience to provide answers that you can apply to your business.
What stimuli can the Head of Strategic Digital Initiatives for Allianz – one of the world biggest insurance companies by revenue – offer his former colleagues in the book business? And, conversely, why did Allianz engage the services of the former ProSieben Media Editor-in-Chief and head of e-commerce for the Weltbild publishing group to take the helm of a much larger digital transformation? Klaus Driever will hold one of the opening keynotes.
How and by which means do readers find authors and their books? And how can these ways of finding be used actively to create greater attention for authors and content – especially to attract new readers? These topics are the focus of Plamen Petrov’s presentation, Head of Kindle Content Germany.
Amongst all the publishing giants, how can a smaller publishing house go on the offensive, buying services from the concerns while still maintaining control? “Unbound” from north London looks like a startup, has a steadily growing team with a mix of programmers and ‘classic’ editors, crowdfunds its ever-expanding bouquet of non-fiction titles, which are very efficiently distributed via Random House. “Editor andliteraryprogrammer”, the title that Mathew Clayton bears as Unbound’s head of publishing, is certainly appropriate.
We will elaborate and develop these and many other approaches in the round-table discussions and workshops at the Publishers’ Forum 2018.

New technologies as opportunity

Not a day goes by without the media reporting on the threat and opportunity of new technologies: artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, big data analytics for “world domination”.
But the more we read, the more difficult the assessment becomes: what does this mean for publishing?
People who want to utilize the industry-specific applications face a dilemma – while it’s clear that this wave of technological innovation is affecting a number of areas and will run in the background of countless processes, it’s also clear that reliable reports on practical experience are lacking.
For this reason, we are preparing these presentations on concrete use cases:
• An overview of the smorgasbord of new technologies, their current capabilities, and selected applications, compiled by the experienced analyst René Büst (arago).
• Big data originates where multiple, separate business processes come together, at Ingram for example, the world’s biggest distributor and print-on-demand provider. Ruth Jones will report where and how Ingram experiments with the latest technologies.
• What happens when innovative minds forge artificial intelligence and machine learning into practical products that convince leading academic publisher Taylor & Francis to simply take over their startup? Sadia Shahid from colwiz will report.
When handling such tricky topics, the Publishers’ Forum team pays particular attention to the long-term value of the information provided and the lessons learned. Furthermore, the speakers will also be available for detailed questioning in round-table discussions and workshops. And please let us know which tech questions are keeping you up at night – we’ll happily pass them on to our experts so that they can prepare their answers accordingly.

Dramatically less readers? Special Publishers‘ Forum topic

Are publishers losing their readers? If so, where do readers go to? On 26-27 April 2018 in Berlin, the international conference “Publishers‘ Forum” will examine how the war for consumer attention is shaping up between social media, streaming platforms, mobile devices, and “the traditional channels for readers” in various countries and markets.
How can “the analog world” of traditional publishing products be connected with the digital experience?
In keynote speeches and workshops, we’ll explore the entire panorama from various perspectives on the basis of market figures, analyses, and outlooks as part of our special topic “Book Markets – Data and Trends”, among others with:
• Michiel Kolman, President of the International Publishers’ Association, Senior VP Information Industry Relations and Academic Ambassador Emeritus at Elsevier
• Felim McGrath, Senior Trends Manager at GlobalWebIndex
• Enrico Turrin, Deputy Director of the Federation of European Publishers
Discussion and orientation will be offered with a focus on markets in the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and Germany – based on data and analyses from Media Control, Nielsen Book, and Centraal Boekhuis.
Last, but not least, we’ll also take a close look at the difficult relationship between print and digital, between the booktrade and self-publishing – based on new data.

Publishers’ Forum 2018: Why you should register now – the 5 most important “Take Aways”

“Beyond Publishing” is the motto of the Publishers’ Forum on 26-27 April 2018 in Berlin. Thinking beyond the traditional publishing paradigms is the order of the day, as publishers are facing a whole gamut of interdependent challenges in order to reach consumers who organize their entertainment and information needs from their smartphones.
Here are the five most important “Take Aways” for the event, each of which alone makes participating in the Publishers’ Forum worthwile:
• Personalization is the key: this is Klaus Driever’s guiding strategic principle, today as a digital thought leader for the Allianz insurance group, and formerly in a similar position in the book trade at Weltbild, and at the ProSieben media group;
• As the market is fundamentally turning, and the book trade is losing book buyers in droves to social media and other digital offerings, it is time for an unflinching analysis of the maelstrom – with a view to the big picture. Felim McGrawth of the Global Web Index offers just such an analysis, with comparisons of different markets, such as Germany, the Netherlands, or the UK, and with new perspectives on print versus digital sales and on direct competition with self-published titles.
• New market conditions call for new business models. The large consumer platforms increasingly rely on direct authoring, subscriptions and premium offers. Plamen Petrov of Amazon and Hermann Eckel of the Tolino Alliance will explain in detail. But there are also completely different approaches, with cross-media storytelling from Kaiken Entertainment, or crowd-funded bestsellers from Unbound.
• Any publisher that goes direct to consumer or implements new, data-driven processes in their company is inevitably confronted with the next wave of technological innovation – artificial intelligence, big data, and machine learning.
• But where exactly are the starting points for the implementation of such digital innovation in a publishing house? How can a strategy be developed and implemented in an existing company organization? Decision-makers from every publishing sector – trade publishers such as C.H.Beck , corporate houses such as Holtzbrinck or Bonnier, educational publishers like Cornelsen, and leading specialist publishers – will speak to these questions at the Publishers’ Forum.
A productive atmosphere with excellent opportunities for networking or just for sharing experiences with colleagues will round off the event.

Critical topic “direct to consumer” at the Publishers’ Forum

Quick communication and star ratings on social media. Apps that tell “stories”. How are our behavior as consumers and our daily lives changing as a result of trends and innumerable new influences? And what does this mean for the publishing industry?
At the Publishers’ Forum in Berlin on 26 and 27 April 2018, we want to explore these key questions. The following speakers, among others, will offer approaches to adapting to the new conditions:
Paula Zuccotti, raised in Buenos Aires, the experienced industrial designer now works internationally from her base in London. With the help of her book “Every Thing We Touch: A 24-Hour Inventory of Our Lives”, she will give an account of the formative influences that objects exert on consumers – based on her intuitive design approach. More With her experience with reader communities at LovelyBooks and in cross-media publishing at Edel, Karla Paul reaches more than 100,000 readers, authors and publishers with her blog, “Buchkolumne” (“Book Column”), and social media presence. “Know your reader!” will be the subject of her investigation with Jonathan Beck (C.H. Beck), Marguerite Joly (Ullstein) and Jan Lenarz (Ein guter Verlag). More As part of a working group at the Börsenverein (German Publishers and Booksellers Association), the experienced consultant Ehrhardt F. Heinold was involved in the development of a tool that can analyze changes in consumer behavior systematically at an early stage. Together with Franziska Schiebe, head of e-business development for the Beltz publishing group, he will present how the tool helps publishing houses and organizations to adjust their business models. More
The Publishers’ Forum will examine the subject of “direct to consumer” from numerous perspectives: the sudden emergence of new trends, the power of communication via social media, the rapid changes that necessitate new conditions in your company.

“New Models for Publishing from other Sectors” will be presented at Forum

In the course of the digital transformation, publishers are experimenting with new approaches to increase the ways in which they create value and to build direct relationships with end consumers.
Increasingly, however, there are also new models from other sectors that are having an impact on the publishing industry. On 26 and 27 April 2018, the Publishers’ Forum will showcase a selection of these innovative approaches:
• Storytel, a company with Scandinavian roots, is an internationally expanding streaming service that is increasingly investing in digital audio books. Financing via crowdfunding is at the core of British publisher Unbound’s business model. It’s not just a matter of seed money for new non-fiction titles, the crowdfunding process also makes it possible to observe the reactions of end consumers at an early stage, and adjust products and marketing strategies accordingly.
• Leading digital platforms like Amazon or Tolino are experimenting with innovative approaches on an even greater scale. “We have to win over new target groups for reading,” argues Plamen Petrov of Kindle Content Germany. In this context, Amazon’s “Prime Reading” – offering digital reading material as a new benefit of the familiar package of films and music – or the ebook subscription, “Tolino Select”, which Tolino boss Hermann Eckel will present, are strategically important starting points for the acquisition of new customers.
These contributions will provide you with a solid foundation for selecting new partners for your business. We already introduced storytelling regardless of the format & creative licensing (Kaiken Entertainment, Laura Nevanlinna, more), direct to consumer & direct to reader (Karla Paul, blogger with +100,000 folllowers, more), and a toolbox for managing change in business models (Ehrhardt F. Heinold, more).

Personalization is the key to our professional future

As dissimilar as the book industry and the insurance industry may be, they are linked by a key digital trend: the increasingly manifest potential of personalized, direct-to-consumer marketing. This thesis didn’t just take keynote speaker and digital strategist Klaus Driever from Weltbild to the Allianz Group, it also introduced a word that neatly connects disparate aspects of the 2018 Publishers’ Forum agenda.
Successful personalization requires the latest technological foundations. Personalization of publishing products presupposes that the processes are organized in such a manner that it is possible to generate data on customers, their preferences and purchasing habits for analysis.
Trailblazers in this area include the British academic publisher Taylor & Francis, which recently acquired Colwiz, a software startup with its roots at the University of Oxford that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to increase the discoverability and usability of relevant content for researchers, as well as logistics specialists like Ingram, the world’s largest provider of distribution and print on demand services to the book business and early adopter of these technologies. Sadia Shahid from colwiz and Ruth Jones from Ingram will present their companies’ respective lighthouse projects and be available to answer detailed questions in a round-table session. René Büst from the artificial intelligence specialist Arago will provide a panoramic view of the principles and applications of this science with a view to the publishing industry.
The development of a successful personalization concept also needs input from a very different perspective – a precise and realistic understanding of consumer behavior, how their preferences develop, which media they use, how they communicate, and how they can be contacted. This requires a combination of knowledge and intuition.
At the Publishers’ Forum, Felim McGrath will impart his knowledge of consumer trends and their influence on reading and learning. He will draw on the comprehensive market research that the GlobalWebIndex performs in key segments like mobile, social media and mobile commerce.
The final piece of the overall picture – the intuitive perspective – comes from Paula Zuccotti. The industrial designer has augmented her designer’s tools with the observational methods of ethnology and has traveled the world to study the daily lives and purchasing habits of people from an array of diverse backgrounds. The result is a fascinating book – “Every Thing We Touch: A 24-Hour Inventory of Our Lives” – with photographs of all the objects that we use in a single day. For the Publishers’ Forum, she is bringing a selection of these glimpses into individuals’ lives to Berlin.
At the Publishers’ Forum, Big Data and Direct to Consumer are not just abstract buzzwords. Rather we invite you to join us on an expedition – from concepts to tools to concrete examples – that will immerse you in the topics that will shape the future of the publishing business.

Get the Big Picture at the Publishers’ Forum – keynotes for your business decisions

Personalized marketing, transmedia storytelling, changes in consumer behavior; new direct-to-consumer distribution channels …
Publishing and reading in the context of smartphones, social media, and mobile commerce …
Counterbalancing changes in the market through strategic expansion of the publishing portfolio …
These are the fields in which today’s important business decisions are taken.
At the Publishers’ Forum, these are also the subjects of this year’s keynotes which will put up signposts and present outlooks on the changing terrain of publishing.
Among the proven thought leaders who will be sharing their experience with you are
• Klaus Driever, digital strategist for the Allianz insurance group
• Ilian Uzunov from Ontotext, AI and machine learning specialists
• Global consumption expert Paula Zuccotti
• Felim McGrath from leading market analysts GlobalWebIndex
• Joerg Rheinboldt from Plug and Play, the Axel Springer start-up accelerator, which has given more than 100 new companies a leg up.
Can you afford to miss two days of concentrated, high-value input and high-level networking? Join us on 26-27 April in Berlin.

New technology for attracting more readers – at the Publishers‘ Forum

At the Publishers‘ Forum conference on 26-27 April in Berlin, ‘new technology’ – artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data analyses – will all be about publishing-related opportunities and challenges. High-quality use cases will illustrate which applications will work in which scenario, including dos and don’ts when implementing these tools.
Big data for the backlist
Making use of the big data which can be obtained from selling content through digital distribution channels can help you to market your backlist more efficiently … Sure, but this will not work without a clear strategy. Hermann Eckel will explain this in his talk on Tolino.
Great suggestions for additional products you might also like, better than your friends’ suggestions
Creating recommendations specifically tailored to the interests of individual users: this is a key asset of Onotext. Ilian Uzunov will demonstrate how the technology offered by his company works in different scenarios, e.g. for articles in the Financial Times, detailed breakdowns of the results of FIFA World Cup matches, and for better editing and promoting thousands of scientific articles published by Springer Nature.
New technology – new company?
In many cases, implementing new technology is more than an issue that just affects your IT department: it can be a challenge to the entire organizational structure of your company. Examples of Trade and STM/Educational publishing will illustrate this. Look forward to contributions from Michaela Philipzen of Ullstein and Cornelsen’s Benjamin Wüstenhagen.
IT ecosystems for more harmonized processes
More than half a dozen workshops will focus on the practical aspects of implementing new technology. Peter Karwowski, CTO Klopotek, will demonstrate the integration of business processes in an IT ecosystem: tightly integrated, highly automated, run in the cloud. How can companies become data-driven organizations? This will be illustrated by Doanh Nguyen of hgv, presenting data of the area of sales.
Other workshops will examine the impact of these new technologies on business models, e.g. planning end-to-end technologies (Liferay), agile management (NEWBOOKS Solutions), plus we’ll be taking a look at the new hot topic interoperability.